Hero Worship, Part 21 of 25

[ravenna_c_tan]

Title: Hero Worship, Part 21/25
Author: Ravenna C. Tan
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Harry/Snape
Word Count: 36,901 total, 1789 this part
Disclaimer: This is non-commercial fanfiction. Trademarked characters are used for non-commercial purposes.
Beta: miraba, jordangrant
Author's Note: A gift for regan_v, as a request she made about submissive!snape brought this on.
Warnings: A touch of BDSM/power exchange sex. Harry is 16.
Archive: Part of the From Dusk till Dawn Severus Snape/Harry Potter Fuh-Q-Fest at http://www.kardasi.com/HPSS/storyindex.htm (The Fest was due to begin Nov. 10th--now pushed back 1 month, but authors may post in their own journals).
Challenge/Summary: "What if...?" What if Snape did not escape at the end of Half-Blood Prince? What if Kingsley Shacklebolt caught him before he could Apparate away? Not trusted by the Order, but still determined to bring down Voldemort, Snape agrees to undergo an unusual spell.
Chapter One, Chapter Two, Chapter Three, Chapter Four, Chapter Five, Chapter Six, Chapter Seven, Chapter Eight, Chapter Nine, Chapter Ten, Chapter Eleven, Chapter Twelve, Chapter Thirteen, Chapter Fourteen, Chapter Fifteen, Chapter Sixteen, Chapter Seventeen, Chapter Eighteen, Chapter Nineteen, Chapter Twenty




Hero Worship, Chapter Twenty One
by Ravenna C. Tan



The first thing I do upon leaving my rooms in the morning is check the Stasis on the Wolfsbane. Nothing has changed. I release the spell and start the cauldron simmering again.

The second thing I do is force down the panic that tries to crawl out of my chest through my throat. I agreed to Potter's terms in an attempt to regain my sanity, not participate in more craziness. But in the light of day I realize how utterly ridiculous it is for me to have such an emotional attachment to him. Nothing good can come of it. I am utterly vulnerable in this state. I am hyperventilating. I have spent years cultivating the forbidding, irascible image I project specifically to discourage anyone from becoming intimate with me, and I with them. Not even the Dark Lord's suspicions made me as sick with dread as I am now. My stomach churns and I sit heavily upon a stool, wondering if there is sassafras bark in the store room, anything to banish the nausea that grips me.

His hands seize my shoulders then, as he is suddenly there, brought by my panic and Argus. "What's wrong?"

Stupid, stupid fool. "Nothing," I say, even though I know he will know I am hiding something. "Just a bit... off balance." I Summon sassafras, and thankfully a jar comes to my hand.

His arms circle me from behind, his forehead resting against my spine. "It's all right," he says, and I would have thought that given that he is the source of my panic that his touch would make it ten times worse. But it does not. His voice is soothing. "Whatever it is, it's going to be all right."

He does not push. He does not pry. I'd be grateful if I didn't suspect it was because he wants something from me. My heart slows to normal. "I'm fine, now," I say.

"Good. We're meeting in McGonagall's old classroom again. Come up when you are done here." He slips away then.

I follow a few minutes later, after I am sure I have composed myself. When I enter the room, most of the others are already there. The murmur of conversation ceases as I stand in the doorway, as if waiting to be invited in. Anyone who was not looking my way does so as the room falls silent. Harry beckons me.

I walk, head high, to his side, then I sink down to sit at his feet, my robes pooling around me. One of the women gives a little gasp, but I cannot see who it is from down here. I lean my head against his knee.

"Leashed him properly now, have you, Harry?" Mundungus Fletcher says from the opposite side of the table.

Harry does not dignify the remark with a response. Instead, he says to me, "Severus, I think you might have something to contribute to the discussion we're going to have. It'd be easier for everyone if you were at eye level."

"As you wish." I raise myself into the chair next to him and fold my hands in my lap. Moody is looking at me with a wild-eyed expression, but he always has a wild-eyed expression. Lupin bites his lip, looking rather haggard as the full moon approaches, and Vance practically leers. I decide to keep my eyes on Harry.

Minerva heads the meeting, as she always does, leading with a discussion of opening Hogwarts on schedule at the end of the summer. There is dissent, but she has already cleared the decision with the board of governors. Hogwarts will be a safer place than most, they reason, and should it become necessary to bring the families of students here for safety as well, provisions can be made. The lioness will protect her cubs.

"Unless a suitable replacement can be found," she says, "I will take on the teaching of Defensive Magic myself."

"Don't you mean Defense Against the Dark Arts?" Arthur Weasley asks, looking puzzled.

She clears her throat. "No, Arthur. I mean Defensive Magic. Entirely too much focus has been placed on the Dark Arts and the overall curriculum has suffered. As a matter of course, much of the Defense curriculum must focus on curses and hexes, but in a time of war I believe students at all levels will need certain basic skills that they have been sorely lacking in the recent decade."

She turns to me. "Severus, if you would, may I borrow your syllabus from last term? To balance my duties as both headmistress and head instructor of this subject, I shall be grouping all first through third years together, and then all fourth through seventh years into a single seminar." She raises an eyebrow to indicate it is my turn to speak.

"A sound, if unorthodox approach, Minerva," I say, as if this is nothing more than a Hogwarts staff meeting. "My notes are entirely yours. May I also suggest that you deputize a few select students to tutor their fellows in the subject?"

Her gaze slides from me to Harry at that. "Yes, Severus, an excellent idea."

I am not tempted to try to hex anyone, and it appears that no one is tempted to hex me, either, as the meeting goes on. When, at one point, Moody raises his voice somewhat in my direction, the mere stiffening of Harry's posture toward him is enough to make him back down.

My caretaker, my guardian. The only real moment of conflict comes at the end of the meeting, when Minerva makes it clear she has a matter to discuss only among the inner circle. The Weasleys, Tonks, Lupin, Harry and Moody, in other words. I move to excuse myself, but Minerva exhorts me to stay. She and Moody exchange heated words, but I say nothing. Harry squeezes one of my hands in his and I sit quietly by.

In the end, it is Moody who stumps out, muttering to himself.

Minerva swings her wand in a warding circle before she begins to speak. "The final item on today's agenda concerns our current lack of information from You-Know-Who's camp. I want your suggestions on a strategy for replacing our former informant."

No one looks at me, though they exchange looks with each other. "Minerva, you can't be serious," says Molly Weasley.

Minerva McGonagall is rarely anything but. She turns to me. "Severus? Any ideas you have on who might be turned, even in their own self-interest, to working for us?"

"Among the older Death Eaters, none," I say. "Our only chance would be with the young ones, the students who are on the verge of being Marked, who fear the Dark Lord more than they respect him." I think on the class now heading into its seventh year. "If Draco Malfoy is alive and not completely out of favor, he might be approached. But there is too much we do not know about his fate."

"Malfoy?" Arthur says the name as if it is a new term for excrement and smells twice as bad.

But Harry speaks up. "No, I agree. I think Dumbledore thought he could be turned..." He looks at me. "You don't think he's dead, do you?"

"I have no way of knowing. I think he is most likely alive, possibly under the wing of his aunt Bellatrix. Knowing her whereabouts and plans would certainly behoove our cause."

"But he's just a boy," Molly Weasley blurts out.

Harry shifts uncomfortably in his chair. I do not, however, point out that we are already using one "boy" in our ranks. "I beg your pardon, Molly," I say, "But Draco is seventeen years old now and may be the most accomplished Occlumens of his generation." I should know--he could keep even me out. It was quite a natural ability for him, probably only second to his talent for deluding himself. I assume that if he is still alive, that his illusions about the Dark Lord, himself, and even his own father have been stripped away, leaving him ripe for the plucking--not unlike the way I was when Albus offered me a choice so many years ago. I say none of that aloud, of course.

The debate begins there, as they argue over whether they can risk even trying to recruit someone, whether young Malfoy or someone else. I let them go on for some time, and then give Harry's hand a squeeze.

"Yes, Severus?" he says. "Do you need something?"

"I started the Wolfsbane simmering again this morning. I do not know if Vance is tending it, but if he is not, I need to advance it to the next step. This close to the full, we cannot afford a mistake." I stand to go and Minerva nods. When Harry nods in agreement, then I go.

I can smell something is wrong as I open the door to the laboratory. "Vance?"

He is bent over the cauldron, stirring furiously and sprinkling neutralizing ash. "Something's gone wrong." He squints over the tops of his spectacles. "This shouldn't be happening."

The formerly silvery mixture has volatile-looking patches of oily red swimming on its surface.

"I can't explain it." He turns on me suddenly. "Unless you sabotaged it. Everyone knows you have no love lost for Lupin."

"Pardon me," I say, even as my hand is feeling in my robes for my wand. The crimson unction is clearly a result of someone adding hellebore to the mixture at an earlier stage, and it would not have shown itself had I not added the Osmanthus. Why Vance would want to poison Lupin I cannot guess, but that is a question I intend to ask him under the influence of Veritaserum.

My wand comes out at the same time Vance lunges at me, not with a wand, but with the silver mincing knife. He grazes the underside of my arm with it as I hex him with a well-placed Stupefy. It takes a moment for me to realize that I've fallen to my knees and that my arm is numb.

He has poisoned me. The coldness in my arm and the slowness of the dripping blood makes me think that the knife was likely coated with distilled monkshood, one of the prime ingredients in Wolfsbane, or a monkshood and hellebore mix.

I try to Summon the antidote for monkshood, which I know is in the next room on a shelf, but I cannot lift my hand. Nor my head.

Nor even my eyelids.

But then he is there, my guardian, with an entire box of bezoars in his hand, jamming one down my throat and then whisking us elsewhere in a rush of wind and darkness.

--

[Go on to chapter twenty-two.]